Explosion height & Alternate movement methods

[alienfood]

2- hold control and then click where you want to go. Note that you need to press control before initiating movement at all (in case you use the arrow path markers/2 clicks movement confirmation). I have had mixed success with this, often ending with less TUs than I thought.

IIRC, the "strafe" movement adds 1TU for "forwardish" or "sidish" movement, and 2TU for "backwardish" movement. Thus if you move to the right, that is normally a 4TU move that would leave you looking right, but it is a 5TU strafe that leaves you looking forward. A backwards-right strafe would be 6TU move that leaves you looking forward.

The strafe code only works to adjacent squares,. Thus you can strafe only one square at a time, you can't lay in a strafing path with one click. It is most useful for moving sideways into a corridor.

You can "strafe" tanks, but the vehicle turns its turret not its hull. The turret stays turned which is great for flanking attacks. IIRC it costs 1TU for up to 90 deg turret turn, which is cheaper than turning the vehicle.

Strafing movement is aware of terrain cost, and the TU penalty is in addition to that. There is no terrain cost for turning a turret.

[Solarius Scorch]

"Backwardish" strafe? It's not possible, sadly.

[KORfan]

No, UFO outer hulls and security walls have an armor of 100, inner hulls and floor tiles have an armor of 80, certain vulnerable walls have 70 armor, and damaged floor tiles have 50 armor. Explosions do half their damage to terrain, so only the Blaster Launcher's 200 HE damage is enough to guarantee you get through. The Alien Grenade has a damage of 90, which isn't enough to break through any UFO or Alien Base Wall. The Heavy Plasma can occasionally break some inner walls and vulnerable walls (guns do between 1/4 and 3/4 of their maximum damage.) There are also some mod weapons that are designed to take down walls.

For more information, you can check here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Destroying_Terrain

Makes sense.  Thanks!

[ivandogovich]

I see that strafing and running is listed in the description.   I love the sideways strafe and use it alot.

However, I can't figure out "running" at all.  Ctrl click on a longer path seems to make no difference in my games.  Can someone tell me what "running" is supposed to do, and how to do it?

Cheers, Ivan

[Align]

Use less TU per tile but more Energy. Doesn't work for immediately adjacent tiles, as then it assumes you're trying to strafe.

[Solarius Scorch]

Use less TU per tile but more Energy. Doesn't work for immediately adjacent tiles, as then it assumes you're trying to strafe.

I... didn't know about it.

And it doesn't really make sense: if there's a specific running mode, then if you're not in this mode, it means you're definitely not running... And therefore shouldn't lose energy at all, or nearly so. This is rather illogical, no?

[Dioxine]

Yeah, it makes little sense, I agree. Anyway it uses 3 TU/3 Energy per tile instead of the standard 4/2, but there is no graphic representation. You've might been running without knowing it, Ivan Sadly using this ability requires to play the game with a calculator in hand, and this is not fun.
Strafing, however, is awesome... I think it saved more lives for me than smoke grenades, or at least close to it, and that's saying something.
Sadly there's no jumping or climbing (JA2 style), I'd really appreciate those

[pkrcel]

"Climbing" or sort of it would be a real boon, those pesky small bushes and low walls could very well be "jumped over" w/o the need to FIRE to breach 

"Hoping" on some surfaces like porches in urban areas or similar would do good, as also going THROUGH (open  ) windows....

[ivandogovich]

Strafing, however, is awesome... I think it saved more lives for me than smoke grenades, or at least close to it, and that's saying something.

Hmm... thats a great point... does anyone use strafing to take the first step off the Skyranger?

[Align]

I... didn't know about it.

And it doesn't really make sense: if there's a specific running mode, then if you're not in this mode, it means you're definitely not running... And therefore shouldn't lose energy at all, or nearly so. This is rather illogical, no?

I guess it's more like the XCOM operatives and aliens always run, but with this they can sprint. Trained individuals can run a lot, but not indefinitely, and sprinting drains anyone fast.

[alienfood]

"Backwardish" strafe? It's not possible, sadly.

That's right, I remember now. The issue was, for "backwards" directions, the unit moonwalks forward, then teleports to the rear of the tile behind, then moves forward into the center of the tile. This was ugly and weird so it got turned off. The fix would really be a flag to run the walking animation in reverse.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Actual values from Config file:

Option	Description	Default
battleExplosionHeight:	A coefficient that controls how much vertical power explosions have. 0 = Explosions are completely flat, as per the original game. 1 = -30 damage units per level (this penalty is in addition to the horizontal penalty of -10 damage per tile). 2 = -10 damage units per level. 3 = -5 damage units per level.	0

Wow. That is not how I think it worked. My initial thought that explosion height is a hard cap. Meaning it does not extend beyond these many levels. Now you are saying with value > 0 it always extend vertically just with different penalty???

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Anyone can explain how explosion height affect smoke grenades? With value > 0 does it mean it always max height up to ceiling? What does smoke explosion power means? Does it generate less smoke, less think smoke or what?

[Juku121]

AFAIK, 'power' for smoke and incendiary damage is just for the purpose of calculating the explosion radius (and height, as above). Smoke has no density, more smoke is 'thicker' smoke in X-Com. Wrong.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Smoke has no density? All the descriptions I saw tell about each tile of smoke thinning down until it disappears.